gendered marketing

Lelo is launching a sex toy for bankers. (I know. I don’t get it either.) When I received the press release, I started thinking… what if other seemingly random demographics also had their own specially-tailored sex toys?

For musicians: A vibrator where each setting creates a sound at a specific pitch. You can use it to help you tune your instrument when you don’t have access to a tuning fork or a digital tuner. You can quiz your lover who claims to have perfect pitch, while distracting them with pleasure. You can even play little songs. There could be vibration patterns that play recognizable tunes, like Old MacDonald Had a Farm and Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.

For sex bloggers: A vibrator with a built-in voice recorder so you can narrate your experience aloud as you masturbate, to refer back to later when you’re drafting your blog post. “It feels like a tiny jackhammer… The buttons are hard to push… Man, this is taking forever to get me off!”

For people concerned with protecting themselves: A weighty dildo that can double as a weapon in dire times. (Oh, wait, the Njoy Eleven already has that on lockdown.)

For people who get frequent UTIs: A vibrator that can tell if you use it for penetration, and if you do, once you’re done, it loudly yells at you to go and pee and doesn’t stop until you’ve peed. (I don’t know how it would be able to tell, but I’m sure there’s a mechanical engineer out there who could figure this out.)

For procrastinators: A vibrator that will only turn on when you’ve successfully cleared your inbox/submitted your essay/cleaned your room/whatever.

For masochists: A vibrator with two dials: one that controls the vibration strength, and one that controls the speed or intensity of the little mechanical arms that scratch your thighs, dig into your skin or spank your ass. (I am picturing this toy and it looks like a mechanical spider to me. I’m freaked out and intrigued.)

For sadists: A Fleshlight-esque masturbator that makes humanoid noises of varying degrees of desperation and pain, depending on how hard and fast you thrust into it.

For camgirls: A dildo or vibrator fitted with two small cameras – a lighted one that can see inside you as you use the toy on yourself, and one that extends from the base for a wider shot of the action – that wirelessly connect to your computer to livestream your activities.

For balloon fetishists: A dildo that responds to kegel clenching by making progressively louder balloon-popping sounds… which turn you on even more… which leads to more clenching… It’s a delicious cycle.

I was sent some products to try from two lube lines, Pink and Gun Oil, both created by the same parent company, Empowered Products. They sent me full-size bottles of both the silicone-based and water-based versions of Pink lube (called Pink and Pink Water, respectively) and smaller samples of various other products they carry, including the basic silicone-based and water-based Gun Oil lubes.

So let’s get this out of the way: these products are highly gendered in their packaging and promotion. Pink lubes have soothing colors (mostly pink, of course), girly fonts, and the words “for women” (which bugs me, because anyone can use these lubes). My Gun Oil samples don’t say “for men,” but the packaging screams it with its military-style font and “masculine” colors. If gendered products irritate you or trigger you, etc., I think you’ll have to look elsewhere; some Sliquid lubes are less binarist in appearance.

But despite the differences in marketing, Gun Oil lubes are actually not different from Pink ones, formulation-wise. As this excellent Novelty Toy Meets Girl review points out, Pink Water and Gun Oil H2O contain the exact same ingredients, as do the silicone-based versions of each lube.

So you could say there’s no difference and that you therefore might as well buy whichever lube appeals to you most, visually, but that’s not exactly true either – there is a difference, and it’s price. As that same review explains (seriously, it’s a fantastic post), you can get greater quantities of Gun Oil lubes for lower prices. As is sadly the norm when it comes to gendered personal care products, women get shafted. So if value’s all you’re after, go for the Gun Oil.

What all of these lubes have in common is that they’re very liquidy and runny. That’s not something I personally like in a lube, because I always end up getting it all over myself and my bedsheets instead of on the toy I’m trying to use it on. But some people prefer that drippiness, because it can feel more “natural” and vaginal lubrication-like.

All the lubes are unscented, but the water-based ones have a sharp, sour taste that I would find really distracting if it got into my mouth at any point during sex. (If you want an oral sex-friendly lube, I can’t say enough good things about Sliquid Swirl.)

The lasting time of these lubes is okay, but not great. I would still tend to choose a thicker, more gel-like lube if I needed long-lasting slickness, like if I was going to use it for anal play. As with all water-based lubes, Pink Water and Gun Oil H2O can be perked up again with the addition of more water, though I don’t find that they get as slick upon reactivation as they initially were. Reapplication makes for a better result, so you might end up using a lot of product.

Lastly, both water-based lubes contain propylene glycol, which is a known irritant. Not everyone reacts badly to it, but if you’ve had problems with propylene glycol lubes before or if you know your orifices are sensitive to this sort of thing, you might want to give these a pass.

Overall, I can’t say that I’m in love with these lubes. I’m likely to stick with my old faithfuls because of their longer lasting times, more natural ingredients, and less aggressively gendered marketing. But, y’know, I’m always glad to have more lube options. Sometimes I even get into a girly mood and want to douse my genitals in something that says “Pink” in big letters.